It’s something I’ve been meaning to explore for a while, but I haven’t found the right context yet. I don’t want to just talk about how boredom may one day render sex as dull an affair as getting your tires rotated. Considering few, outside of those with a serious car fetish, ever achieved orgasm through general automotive care, extracting the impact of boredom on sex requires a special approach.

Unlike that toy you got sick of as a kid or that brand of cereal that just doesn’t do it for you, sex is a major biological imperative. In the same way you can’t get bored with surviving a bear attack, you can’t necessarily get bored with sex in the same way. That’s not to say boredom doesn’t find a way. It just has to be sneaky about it.

That brings me to an article out of Germany from Deutsche Welle, which explored the reason why men lose their sex drive as they age. It may seem like one of those obvious issues that doesn’t need much thought. It makes sense that men will lose their sex drive as they age. Pretty much every other bodily function declines as we age so why not our sex drive?

This is where I give credit to the Germans for something other than beer and bratwurst. They try to break down the components of this seemingly-obvious idea that our interest in sex declines as our bodies decline and we get more prone to boredom, among many other things. What they describe is somewhat revealing.

But what if you are bored of sex, bored of all the humping, grinding and groaning, the bad breath and false teeth, and the pretending you’d rather do this in that way than watch the footie, or, I don’t know, clip your toe nails?

Don’t laugh: it can happen.

A study published in 2017 by BMJ Open reported that 15 percent of men and 34 percent of women among the participants had experienced “a lacking interest in sex.” This was based on a survey of 4839 men and 6669 women, aged between 16 and 74, in opposite-sex and same-sex relationships.

Now, the numbers are not all as straight forward as that. There are various reasons why people lose or lack interest in sex, and not all of them are about age, but they are similar for men and women.

For instance, if you’ve experienced what the researchers call “non-volitional sex” or if you’ve had a sexually transmitted infection, you may lose interest. Being unemployed is downer too. Interestingly, though, retired women were “less likely to lack desire.” Also, and this is odd, having sex will actually lower your interest in it. Who said sex gets better with practice, hey? Instead it sounds like laying off and getting some kip will do you wonders.

The bold parts are my doing. I wanted to single those out because they highlight some variation among certain individuals and not just in terms of how much blood they can direct into their genitals. Life experiences, for better and for worse, can very much affect how we view the world, which includes sex, romance, and boredom. Certain experiences are more influential than others, to say the least.

Needless to say, those wildly varied experiences are going to produce equally varied results, if not more so. Hefner, whether by natural endowment or just being surrounded by so many beautiful women, didn’t get bored with sex. Age didn’t slow him down as much as it required him to get creative. Given how great a motivator sex can be, that makes sense.

It makes just as much sense that someone who has had negative experiences with sex will also be likely to avoid it or get bored with it quicker. To them, sex isn’t just this fun activity you can do in a hot dub with a bunch of Playboy Playmates. It’s this big, stressful ordeal that everybody tells them should be stressful. As a result, we tend to get bored more readily, if only to avoid the stress.

This is the key in understanding how certain people get bored with sex and lose their desire. That’s not to say that if we all lived Hugh Hefner’s life, as though our imaginations aren’t lurid enough, we would never lose our sexual prowess. It’s more a matter of how we condition ourselves.

Some of it is physical. Hefner was in great shape for a man his age. Being surrounded by beautiful women and working so hard to become the epitome of the Playboy lifestyle has a way of keeping a man motivated to be healthy.

Some of it is mental, as well. Attitudes go a long way towards influencing how we see ourselves, how we act, and how others react to us. When our thoughts and attitudes about sex are shaped by the prudish proclivities of the FCC and the Vatican, they’re going to shape how we approach those ideas, even if they are hard-wired into us.

When we see something as stressful and daunting, it’s going to require more of our energy, even if we need it to survive and propagate. Eventually, we’ll get tired of that stress and output, more so than the act itself. In a sense, it’s not so much that people get tired of orgasms. They get tired of what they have to do to get them and how they have push themselves to do it.

There are cases, such as those with serious health problems, that can’t avoid that kind of stress. Those cases are tragic, but it’s the mental cases, which are more directly influenced by boredom, that are their own tragedy. The sheer variation of how people conduct themselves sexually as they age is proof of that. The article even touched on it.

Men don’t experience a menopause, as women do in the 40s or 50s, but the lower testosterone levels are cited as a reason why older men have fewer orgasms – from an average of three per week in a man’s 20s to less than one a week in his 60s.

But this is no “hard and fast” rule. Plenty of men and women continue to enjoy sex well into their 70s and sometimes into their 80s. And we haven’t even touched on masturbation. You may find that comforting.

Again, the bold parts are my doing. I apologize if they evoke mental images that you could’ve done without, but those images of wrinkly bodies and sweaty liver spots should help emphasize the point I’m trying to make here.

It is possible for people to sustain their interest in sex over a long period of time. It’s also possible for people to get bored with it, but that boredom often has a larger context with larger implications.

It’s sure to become more obvious as we live longer lives and are better able to overcome the physical limitations that keep us from having sex in our 90s, as the pharmaceutical industry has shown. It will likely become a larger issue for couples and individuals alike. Whatever happens in the battle against boredom, I intend to continue fighting it with this website and my sexy novels.